For more on researching for fiction, go to the main research page. A lot of great writers started out as journalists, and critics have offered a lot of reasons for that shared background. Journalists know how to work under deadline, they have an instinct for finding a story, they’ve learned how to find an angleContinue reading “Research tip #3: Go to the source”
Category Archives: fiction
Research tip #2: Know your limits
For more on researching for fiction, go to the main research page. Sing it with me now: “To everything there is a season . . . A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to research, andContinue reading “Research tip #2: Know your limits”
Research tip #1: Marry a librarian
For more on researching for fiction, go to the main research page. I’ve been hanging out in libraries since I was a kid, and I was a regular at my town’s public library during high school. My first year of college, I was commuting 40 minutes to school and had a huge gap between classesContinue reading “Research tip #1: Marry a librarian”
Re-researching fiction: The new, expanded edition!
For more on researching for fiction, go to the main research page. A while ago I wrote a blog entry on the research I was doing for my NaNoWriMo novel, a twisted little Civil War novel set in southwestern Louisiana during the last of the war years. At the time I was just counting someContinue reading “Re-researching fiction: The new, expanded edition!”
Counting beans (now with more numbers!)
I’m not one for math–anything more complicated than my checkbook and I break into a sweat, and even the checkbook is a chore I’d much prefer to avoid–but I have always been fascinated by numbers. Ask me to prove anything with them and I’ll freak out and slip into a coma, but ask me toContinue reading “Counting beans (now with more numbers!)”
Is there anybody out there? Sensory deprivation and creative writing
I’m currently (and rapidly) revising my second novel, which also served at my dissertation and which is set in an afterlife, with a dead narrator and a whole mess of dead characters. The harderst part, I think, is the opening, the first third of the book, because at heart the novel is a roadtrip adventureContinue reading “Is there anybody out there? Sensory deprivation and creative writing”
Acknowledgments: NaNoWriMo update #4
One of the reasons I decided to participate in NaNoWriMo this year was the pressure. I don’t mean just write a bunch in November. I mean sign up at the site, with a profile and picture and everything; I mean post regular updates and excepts on the site and in Facebook and here in myContinue reading “Acknowledgments: NaNoWriMo update #4”
It was a dark and stormy writer’s block….
A long time ago, when I was a nerd in high school, I hung out with a bunch of other nerds in high school and we played role playing games. You know the bit Mike Myers did on his 2001 appearance on Inside the Actors Studio, with one eye crossed and speaking in a lisp asContinue reading “It was a dark and stormy writer’s block….”
Researching fiction (NaNoWriMo update #3)
For more on researching for fiction, go to the main research page. Here I am at the end of day 8 of NaNoWriMo. My current total word count is 25,504. I know that makes it seem I’ve spent every waking moment of the past week writing, but really, I’ve managed to work in more thanContinue reading “Researching fiction (NaNoWriMo update #3)”
Writing in the middle (NaNoWriMo update #2)
When I was doing doctoral work at UNT, my writing professor Barb Rodman once commented that I could write more story in to less space than anyone she’d seen in a long while. “I’m always surprised when I finish a story and I look at the page count to see how short it is. YourContinue reading “Writing in the middle (NaNoWriMo update #2)”
Samuel Snoek-Brown 